Cincinnati Magazine: THE CHAOS THEORY BEHIND OHIO’S REDISTRICTING FIASCO

Cincinnatians rarely pay attention to what happens 100 miles up I-71 in Columbus unless, of course, it involves a Buckeyes football game or a matchup between the cities’ professional soccer teams for the “Hell Is Real” trophy. But local residents who haven’t kept an eye on what’s been happening with the Ohio Redistricting Commission in Columbus are missing a “hell is real” battle of historic proportions—a political and legal donnybrook over drawing the state’s new legislative and congressional district maps that could leave its constitution in tatters.

The stakes are far more serious than sports bar bragging rights. The outcome will determine whether Ohio voters have a real say in deciding who represents them in the Statehouse and in Congress or whether they’ll continue to waste their votes in heavily-gerrymandered “safe” partisan districts.  …

The Ohio Supreme Court has so far rejected as unconstitutional four sets of state legislative maps and one Congressional map, including its latest ruling on April 14. Under new guidelines that make it harder to carve up cities, the 2022 maps look more compact than the old 2011 gerrymandered ones, but they still have skewed outcomes heavily favoring Republicans. A 4-3 majority of the Supreme Court, including Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, has argued each time that Republicans on the commission ignored the redistricting reforms overwhelmingly approved by Ohio voters.

Despite court orders to use an independent mapmaker and open up the process to the public, Republican members of the commission dismissed a constitutional map created by a pair of bipartisan mapmakers. Instead, they approved a fourth state legislative map at its March 28 meeting, once again tweaking in secret the previous maps already declared unconstitutional.

Just two Republican commission members, Senate President Matt Huffman and Speaker of the House Bob Cupp, have an iron grip on its proceedings and, as shown in court depositions, exclusive use of their own mapmakers. Huffman and Cupp told commissioners at the March 28 meeting that using an independent mapmaker would have meant missing the court’s 10-day deadline.

“They’re lying, and they know we know they’re lying,” says Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, one of several non-partisan groups fighting for redistricting reform. The drawing of constitutional legislative maps is indeed complicated and time-consuming because of the requirements to avoid splitting cities. Nevertheless, it should take skilled mapmakers “less than a week” to draw a constitutional map, amateur mapmaker Geoff Wise told the commission at a September hearing. …

Following the April 4 contempt hearing in the Ohio Supreme Court, Mia Lewis, associate director of Common Cause Ohio, told Spectrum News that the Republican strategy for the last year has been to run out the clock. “They said, ‘Oh, it was impossible to meet that (court) deadline.’ Well, yes, if you’re trying to make it impossible by stalling and wasting time.”